SLB Speakers @ 2018 ECI announced

SLB is pleased to host yet another guest symposium. In 2018, SLB will host a session at the ECI meeting in Amsterdam. Below are the featured speakers that have been selected from applications from the membership. Another example of the many opportunities that SLB membership offers!

Dr. Tobias Dallenga is an Assistant Project Leader in the Department of Cellular Microbiology at the Research Center Borste, Germany and a Lecturer for the study programs Infection Biology and Molecular Life Science at the University Lübeck, Germany. Since multi drug-resistant variants of Mycobacterium tuberculosis developed into a public health crisis, Dr. Dallenga is working on novel approaches based on host-directed therapies adjunct to antibiotics treatment to tackle the global tuberculosis epidemic. He identified human neutrophils and their necrotic cell death as a point of vantage to overcome the vicious circle of host cell necrosis that takes place in the lungs of tuberculosis patients. Dr. Dallenga finished his PhD in 2010 at the University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany working on Multiple Sclerosis research and holds a degree in neurobiology.

Dr. Margarita Dominguez-Villar is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology and Human and Translational Immunology Program at Yale School of Medicine. She completed her post-doctoral training at the Center for Neurologic Diseases at Harvard Medical School and the Department of Neurology at Yale University working with Dr. David Hafler on the biology of regulatory T cells in patients with autoimmune disease. Her laboratory focuses on understanding the molecular pathways that control regulatory T cell plasticity and T cell responses in autoimmune and infectious diseases, and the role of the innate immune system in instructing these responses.Dr. Justin Perry obtained his PhD at Washington University in St. Louis under the supervision of Dr. Chyi-Song Hsieh studying the development of self- and allo-tolerance in the thymus. He is currently a Cancer Research Institute - Mark Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Kodi Ravichandran at the University of Virginia. Dr. Perry's research seeks to elucidate how phagocytes accomplish the energy-intensive process of apoptotic cell clearance, or 'efferocytosis'. Efferocytosis occurs at a rate of nearly one million cells per second in the body and defective clearance can lead to inflammatory diseases. Yet, relatively little is known about how a phagocyte achieves such rapid corpse uptake while handling the physiological stress due to increased energy requirements, intracellular pH change, or cell volume regulation. One such family of proteins the Ravichandran Lab, and Dr. Perry in particular, are focusing on are the solute carrier (SLC) family of proteins. Dr. Perry’s overall aim is to co-opt the knowledge gained from basic studies of phagocyte biology to, hopefully, design better cancer immunotherapeutics.